Losing a friend is somehow the worst thing. I mean, I’ve suffered a big loss this year and I’m not diminishing that. Losing someone to death seems inevitable and unpreventable though. We are all going to die. Sorry to burst that bubble for you. And we don’t get to choose when or where or how.
When a friendship dies, that’s a choice. Conscious or not. At some point one or both parties made decisions that slowly ate away at the delicate strings that hold friendships together. We pick our friends. They might fall into our lives randomly but we decide that “yup, this one sticks”. Friendships can develop with lightning speed, surprise both parties beyond belief and last lifetimes. Or they can creep along slowly, setting up with effort and hard work and end as abruptly as a crash test dummies career. Regardless of the type of friend, the level of friendship, the effort and memories and laughter you share; when a friendship dies, it kills a piece of you.
We can try to look back and pinpoint exactly what went wrong. We cns try to blame the other person completely. We can try to ignore it; pretend it never existed. That a piece of us wasn’t complexly tied up with a piece of another human and that we never gave bits of ourselves to someone who, in the end, owed us nothing and reminds us of that every time we see them in public. We can blame ourselves and wonder what was wrong with us that this other human just couldn’t stand us anymore. And worst of all, we can mourn. Mourning a living person may be the hardest grief we can bear, because we are reminded that they aren’t gone by random whims of the Fates they have chosen (or we have) to go.
I find, as I examine the friendships I’ve lost, that more often than not, I could have saved them;? For a time. It would have been short, frustrating, borrowed time. And That’s why I try not to let it hurt too much. I struggle every day not to let the hurt and feelings of betrayal get to me and bleed over into the new relationships that inevitably bloom on the grave of the old. That’s the hardest; opening yourself up to new people when someone has left you, abandoned you. But if you do, you may begin to realize that the hole that was left when the old thing ended, isn’t as deep as you’d thought.
It hurts when a friendship ends. It can feel like the worst thing. I can honestly say that sometimes it is for the best. I think this time was one of those times.
Bountiful Words, Beautiful World 